Outcome: Concept app for smartphones, also actively contributed to Scoop- a startup in the Bay Area working on similar concept

Commuting is a major struggle in overpopulated urban areas because of heavy traffic on roads & public transport. The idea of carpooling has always promised that people can travel together at ease, and that it is absolutely wallet-friendly and eco-friendly. Carpool recently became both a symbol and tool of fighting Global Warming as a number of businesses and startups initiated their new revenue models around it. If that continues to be the case we will soon have reliable carpool services embedded into our daily lives. While working as a research intern in Palo Alto during summer 2016, I simultaneously pursued independent research on this topic by interviewing communities of drivers and carpool users, and by actively participating and contributed to a few constructive carpool experiments such as Scoop, Uber Pool and Lyft Line. This research further propelled the ideation and design of a concept app that offers automated carpool service.

It was my pleasure to contribute to Scoop- a carpool startup in the Bay Area. Scoop was growing fast and I had a chance to share my research and ideation with Jon Sadow, the cofounder.

Opportunity

Driving around 20 miles one way to work is part of daily routine if you’re based in the Bay Area. Traffic sees huge bottlenecks during rush hours at major intersections, commercial areas, and near entries and exits to freeways. This not only adds to the extra time and hassle of commuting from home to work and back again, but also contributes to tremendous amounts of CO2 emissions. Owning and maintaining one’s own vehicle is another facet of the problem: a considerable percentage of interviewees said that they own a car only because there’s no alternative to it, since public transport is neither time-efficient nor always convenient. Some said they have given up driving and have started using services like Uber and Lyft for their daily commute. This creates a perfect opportunity for an automated carpool solution since people are facing commute problems, and are also willing to actively participate in solving them.

Internet of Things has led to new business models based on sharing resources. We have seen notable shifts in recent years from businesses based on ownership of resources to those based on access to resources. Carpooling, combined with a real-time matching service, would be a practical solution. In fact a few organizations that I’ve worked with have already started designing and testing their carpooling apps, and with this projectI hope to contribute further to their efforts.